


Even Dreamier in Person -

by MercuryGray



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1940s Girl Gang, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Crossover, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: It was going to be a quiet day in Aldbourne - until a couple of superheroes showed up.Adjacent to The Darkening Sky
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Darkening Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24221827) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 



> From a prompt on tumblr from broadwaybaggins.  
> Okay, I don’t know if this is a prompt or just a general musing, but: Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos meets the 1940s Girl Gang. Thoughts?

It had promised to be a slow day. Drill was done, classroom instruction had been put on hold while, and in their billet in the Aldbourne Women’s Institute hall, the women of Easy Company were making the most of a make-and-mend day, fixing buttons, sewing on patches, and, in at least one instance, attending to a deep cleaning of her firearms and weapons.

It would have continued to be a slow day, too, had not the door opened, and six feet of pure GI muscle and tailored Eisenhower jacket slipped inside, quickly closing the door behind him before removing his sunglasses, turning around, and jumping, slightly, when he realized that he had an audience. “Afternoon, ladies," he offered, a little tenative. "Mind if I hide in here a minute?”

“Take as long as you like,” Ruth said, sitting up a little straighter in her chair and laying aside her sewing so she could fluff her hair a little.

The captain (he was a captain, the two bars on his collar were unmistakable) nodded, glancing out the window again. “Thanks. I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but sometimes that press corps is just murder.”

Just as he said that, there was a commotion in the street outside, as a tall blue flash went by, followed, not even closely, by a crowd of reporters, photographers, and camera people came whipping down the block, obviously in hot pursuit of the blue someone, now long gone. “Well, that’ll keep ‘em busy for a while. Falsworth’s about the same size and he’s fast enough for distraction work.” He glanced around the room, clearly oblivious to several of the women eyeing him in the same manner a tigress observes a steak, and held out a hand to the nearest trooper. “Captain Steve Rogers, nice to meet you.”

“Charmed,” Ruth said, taking the handshake and trying not to look faint. “Private Ruth Shapiro.”

Rogers nodded, glancing around the room and making eye contact with everyone. “So, what outfit are you ladies with? We’re supposed to make an appearance at a general hospital up the road a ways - are you nurses?”

“We’re with the 101st, captain,” Marjorie said, stepping forward before someone tripped over one of the several chins now sitting on the floor. “Paratroopers.” She held up her garrison cap with its bright blue patch the same way a cop might hold a badge.

“Seriously?” It seemed it was Captain Rogers’ turn to look impressed. “This is my lucky day. We just finished doing a bond drive in the states, and I can’t tell you how many letters the press office has gotten asking us to get a lady paratrooper in the Howling Commandos - sent us a lot of cute pictures, too. Something for the sisters to join in on while the boys are out playing. I just finished reading that article LIFE magazine did about you. Amazing. Ladies, you’re going to laugh, but this an absolute honor.”

Smiles and pleased elbows around the room, _an honor, to meet us, fancy that._ “Don’t thank us yet, Captain,” Marjorie said with a slim smile “No stars on our jump wings just yet.”

“But you'll get there,” Captain Rogers said with an earnest smile. “Say, are you all busy later?”

But no one got a chance to respond, for at that exact moment another tailored jacket appeared in the window, glancing inside and then tapping on the door.

“Hey, Steve, you in there? Coast is clear.”

Captain Rogers - Steve - opened the door to let the other man inside. “Buck, you won’t believe what these girls are.”

“What, apart from beautiful?” James Buchanan Barnes asked, looking around the room and smiling. (In strong contrast to his friend, he seemed to have a very good idea what everyone thought of him.) There were more blushes - Barnes really wasn’t a patch on the Captain, but the cocksure attitude more than made up for it.

“Lady Paratroopers,” Steve said, with the air of a child who has just discovered that birthdays come every year and always involve cake.

“You don’t say,” Bucky said, looking around the room with renewed interest, catching Julie’s eye and winking. (Julie, for her part, blushed.)

“I asked 'em if they’d join us for drinks after the show today,” Steve reported.

It was Bucky’s turn to look impressed. “Steve, that’s the first smart thing you’ve done all day.” Barnes looked around the room, very pleased indeed. “We’re free at seven. Where can we meet you? That Bell place up the street?”

Marjorie took the initiative for the rest of the starstruck room and nodded in the affirmative. “Of course, Sergeant. Seven it is, at the Bell.”

Barnes nodded, clapping his friend around the shoulder, and, touching his hat, steered the two of them out into the street, looking both ways to make sure the coast was clear before they broke into a run in the opposite direction from the press corps.

Ruth looked around the room and let her mouth fall open in frank astonishment. “God, he’s even dreamier in person!”


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t every day that one got to meet a group of superheroes.

For girls like Marjorie and June, with younger brother comic book fiends at home, it was akin to meeting God, a figure often discussed but rarely understood, but even those among them who had no siblings had a vague understanding of who the Howling Commandos were, either from newsreels of their real exploits, or the radio show of their slightly fictionalized ones, or (in Judy’s case) because they were a frequent feature in the Hollywood fan magazines.

(The admirers, it should be noted, were also not strictly limited to the younger set - Liebgott, who maintained loudly that Captain America was for kids and The Shadow was really the superior Sunday night radio program, had leaned, ever so subtly, on Ruth to see if he could tag along with the girls to the pub that evening. She had declined.)

But tonight, it seemed, was less about Cap’s Crusaders and more about the lady paratroopers, Ruth, Doris, Billie and June holding court at the bar with the Commandos practically eating out of Ruth’s hand as she pantomimed her way through one of Sobel’s more fantastic failures.

“Something bothering you?” Joan asked, returning from the bar with two Gimlets and slightly less of her usual _froideur_ after Dernier had insisted, as the representative of a grateful nation, on giving every woman present the traditional _bises_.

“Just thinking that Dugan looks familiar,” Marjorie said pensively, taking her drink and sipping thoughtfully. “Where from, I couldn’t say. He must just have one of those faces.”

Joan frowned. “How many men in bowler hats do you know?”

Marjorie had little time to answer - the door swung open and the main event breezed in with a woman at his elbow, a capable looking thing with very bright lipstick and a steely eye. The Commandos gave a shout of recognition from the bar, and Captain Rogers acknowledged them with a wave and a smile before steering his companion towards the back of the room, and Joan and Marjorie.

“Ladies, allow me to introduce Peggy Carter, our Strategic Scientific Reserve liaison, and a valuable member of the team. Agent Carter, this is Sergeant Gordon - and -”

“Lieutenant Warren,” Joan supplied. She’d missed the earlier run-in at their billets and had been read in later, Marjorie complaining that her brothers would never believe her if she didn’t have at least one witness.

“- both with the 506th."

“Pleasure to meet you.” Carter shook hands with Joan and Marjorie, looking over the two women with a quiet sort of expression that might have been admiration and might have been censure - with the British it was sometimes impossible to tell. “I’m not sure you have a bigger fan than Captain Rogers; he’s been following you all very closely after some of the letters his fans have sent in.”

“Yes, we heard,” Marjorie said with a grin.

“Which reminds me - I brought some with!” Rogers remembered, reaching into his pocket and (with the air of a delighted father) pulling out several well-creased drawings for Joan and Marjorie to admire.

“Oh, look, Joan, she’s doing the pose from that picture that Time ran!” Marjorie said, pointing out the woman with the parachute (still open) standing behind Dugan’s bowler hat and Morita’s slouchy jeep cap.

“Goodness, so she is. Going to want to lose that ‘chute if she wants to fight the Germans, though,” Joan said with a chuckle, admiring it for a moment. “Might slow her down a little.”

“See - you’re already a superhero,” the Captain said with a smile. “Why not hang up the jump wings and join us? We offer great benefits. See Europe first.”

“With all due respect, Captain,” Joan said, passing the stack of drawings back, "why not use what you already have?“ Her eyes tracked pointedly to Agent Carter.

"My involvement with the unit’s a bit…hush-hush,” Peggy said with an abbreviated smile. “The SSR likes to keep out of the public eye, when we can.” Joan and Marjorie nodded. “I’ve been telling him you ladies are probably far better fixed here than you’d be with the Commandos.”

Joan gave a sorry smile. “Sorry, Captain - she’s right. I fought too hard for too long for what I’ve got now, and I can’t go back.” She looked at the drawings, sitting on the table. "America’s girls are depending on us.“

Rogers gave a congenial shrug. "Well, you can’t fault a fellow for trying. Drinks?” Marjorie and Joan shook their heads, and Steve nodded, going to the bar for what was apparently an unspoken regular order of Agent Carter’s.

“He seems like a nice guy,” Marjorie observed, quietly. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“He really is,” Carter said with a smile. “It’s not an act, it’s …just him.”

“And…no hard feelings about us turning him down?” Joan asked, out of an excess of caution.

Agent Carter’s smile widened knowledgeably. “Captain Rogers knows a little bit about having to fight for something,” she said. “He’ll understand you _completely_.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sam was having a hard time getting his jaw off the floor.

It was quite a collection, as war souvenirs went, laid out on the table with careful precision - a paratrooper’s fighting knife, a Luger with a worn handle, a souvenir program from the Louvre, a collection of mismatched uniform insignia, bars and oak clusters and infantry sabers in varying shades of gold, a string of pearls with a swastika in the clasp, two silk scarves, one printed with a map, the other in fading leopard print, a pencil sketch of two soldiers, walking by a river with what looked like Notre Dame in the background. Piles of letters, bound together with string, addressed with FREE in the corners. But perhaps best of all were the pictures, stacks of unbound black and white photographs with corners already curling, of paratroopers in dozens of little towns in Normandy, battered, bloodied, and somehow still smiling, houses and hedgerows, and views from the Eagle’s Nest.

And here was one of a group of officers, a few men and one woman, their faces the stuff of a dozen tv documentaries and an HBO series, and in the middle, Steve.

Sam stared. “Shit, man, you really knew these peop -” He looked up, realizing he had an audience, and blushed a little, looking embarrassed. “Sorry, ma'am.”

“Believe me, Captain Wilson, I said much worse myself back in the day,” the stately octogenarian said with a smile, negotiating around the coffee table with a tray of tea things. “You’re fine, really. I pulled a few things out when they said I might be expecting guests. I’m glad you’re enjoying them. Pick them up, if you like. They’ve seen plenty of use and I promise you won’t hurt them. We don’t make things quite the way we used to.”

Sam’s eyes lit up, and he gravitated, as Steve had known he would, to the fighting knife, the design not changed much in nearly sixty years. “Captain Rogers said you were pararescue?” She asked, tucking herself neatly onto the couch.

“Yes, ma'am. And they’re still talking about you at jump school. Every woman coming out of that program knows your name.”

She smiled at that. “It’s nice to be remembered. And to remember. Isn’t that right, dear?”

Her husband appeared in the doorway, his face filled with aged gravitas and soft appreciation. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Certainly brings back some memories seeing this fellow again.” He shook hands with Steve, the handshake just as firm and fair as it had been sixty years ago.

Steve grinned. “Sam, this is -

"Oh, I know who he is.” Sam was trying to pull his jaw off the ground again. “Sir, can I just say, it is a huge honor to meet you. I think I’ve read your books about a dozen times.”

The Major shook hands with the younger pilot, a modest smile on his face. “Well, that means something, if this is the fellow they’ve got you driving around,” the older man said with a smile. “Admiring the collection? This is just bits of it - we had some shadowboxes made, a few years ago, papers and such.”

“Perhaps Captain Wilson would enjoy seeing those, dear - and perhaps having some ice cream? In your study? And you can talk about those books?” His wife made a somewhat pointed invitation, and the Major nodded, putting a hand around Sam’s shoulder and bringing him out into the hallway.

“We couldn’t ever get it in Europe and now Hanks sends me some every year for my birthday - good stuff.”

“Hanks…sends you…wow.”

She watched the two of them leave with a fond smile, and turned back to Steve, and the tea things, pouring a cup for each of them. “He’ll tell you he doesn’t like talking, but that’s just the lectures. Give him someone who cares and doesn’t think he’s God Almighty and he’ll chat for hours. Especially the young guys who’ve just gotten out.”

“Surprised they don’t have you out on the lecture circuit yourself,” Steve said. “When I told a couple of the girls at SHIELD who I was going to see today they were very excited.”

“My dance card’s just as full as his is,” she said, all modesty. “There’s an increasingly short list of people I’ll take calls from - and Nick Fury is one of them.” She looked across the table, her eyes soft. “We were very sorry to hear about Peggy, Steve, truly. We would have gone to the funeral, but…sometimes it’s easier not to travel. And we wouldn’t have liked to steal her spotlight. She got it so seldom.”

“She never liked being the center of attention,” Steve agreed. 

“It’s hard, loosing someone. Lord knows I’ve done my fair share,” she offered, sipping her tea. “They say it gets…easier, with age, but I’m not so sure. The longer you spend with someone…the harder it is to let them go.”

“I almost feel like…I lost her twice,” Steve said, staring at his tea. “And it…it wasn’t just her…it was…”

“The world?” She smiled and glanced at the side table, the remnants of a life well-lived. “I look back at all these pictures and think about the woman in them, and she’s not the woman I am now. A lot of life happened between now and then - but the change was gradual. How you must feel I can’t even guess.”

“Homeless.” The word dropped out of his mouth without thinking about it, but it was true - his wordly possessions could be packed into a duffle, his friends numbered on his fingers, and he was living in a rented apartment filled with borrowed art; the epitome of a casual drifter, just passing through. Looking around the house, he could not help thinking that this…could have been his. Celebrated leader marries celebrated leader, settles down, lives in peace.

 _But would you have, really?_ He wondered to himself. _Or would it have been more of the same - more war, and no peace?_

She could see he was thinking about something, and gave him grace to do it - a woman too used to living among soldiers and their memories. “Well, you’re always welcome here,” she said, when he looked up again and met her eye, and she leaned across the table to take his hand and squeeze it. “Any time you want to get away from it, just call. We’ll tell the neighbors you’re my… cousin from Wyoming.”

That, at least, got a laugh, and for a moment, he remembered what it was like to be among friends, and the heaviness of the world was lighter. Here he wasn’t Captain America - he was just Steve. “Now, you gotta tell me about some of these,” he said, swiveling in his chair to pick up the box of photographs. “I feel like there’s a lot of good stories in here…”


End file.
